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You're reminded incessantly of change—90 years of it— throughout this thoroughly delightful production of this thoroughly frothy musical. It's the earliest Encores! has done to date, and feels it. Watching what director Mark Brokaw, choreographer Randy Skinner, musical director Rob Fisher, and their crack cast have made of this evening is truly stepping into a time machine. Lady, Be Good is utterly representative of an era now alien to all of us, when Broadway was struggling (if not very hard) to integrate vaudeville into itself and make sense of, well, any quasi-dramatic work that had a few songs attached. The result is a series of musical numbers (with lyrics by George's brother, Ira, of course) and a series of scenes (by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, adapted here by Jack Viertel) that sometimes go together, but by and large don't bother to try. So don't plan to get too wrapped up in the story that winks at the notion of a social conscience, but doesn't actually believe the silliness it's selling. You know the brother and sister who've just been evicted and are facing living on the streets, Dick and Susie Trevor, will somehow come out on top—the roles, after all, were originated by Fred and Adele Astaire in supersonic ascent, so they have to. You know that the shyster lawyer, J. Watterson Watkins, will somehow escape the clutches of the violent Mexican Manuel Estrada. You know that the handsome hobo will turn out okay, and that the glittering, wealthy dilettante who brings them all together at her lush garden party will somehow get what she wants, too, even though no one wants her. This is, after all, the way these kinds of shows work—the way they've always worked. By intentionally avoiding even the very notion of surprise, Viertel and Brokaw have perfectly recreated the feather-light Broadway of the 1920s for 2010s audiences, giving in to each of the myriad ridiculousnesses on which it's based. The myriad Astaire specialties are left intact for the fine, limber presences of Danny Gardner and Patti Murin. Everyone cedes the stage for a couple of minutes to the Encores! Orchestra's two pianists, Chris Fenwick and Greg Anthony, so they may plunk out a jauntily ragged-up version of the title tune. As for Tommy Tune, he's on hand to sing and tap his way through "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Little Jazz Bird" for reasons that transcend the unfathomable. The logic is apparently that if Tommy Tune exists, you use him—early-1920s thinking at its most intoxicatingly brainless.
As I've said, you must stop expecting immediately that anything will really make sense; that's the only way to survive the daffy dialogue, to say nothing of the likes of "Swiss Miss," the late-show show-off spot for Dick and Susie that has them yodeling and dressing up in Alpine finery because, as far as I can tell, in a '20s musical, someone had to. (Michael Krass consulted on the charmingly kooky costumes and Anna Louizos on the sets; the lights are by Ken Billington.) The only noticeable stumbling block here is with the casting. When the thread weaving together the individual elements of a show is this single-atom thin, you need spectacular, scintillating talent to fill the gaps. You only unequivocally get that from Tune, who at 76 evinces an effervescent effortlessness that no one else onstage shares; plus, he lets you know that he knows it's all absurd, which only makes you love him and his flashy footwork all the more. Gardner and Murin are talented and likable enough, but lack the electric zaniness the Trevors seem to have been written for. Douglas Sills is perfectly cooked ham as Watkins and Richard Poe appropriately threatening as Estrada, but both are missing the over-the-top oomph their roles need. Colin Donnell sparkles perhaps a little too much as the hobo, keeping you from totally buying his expressed financial affliction, a key element of the barely-there plot Jennifer Laura Thompson as the dilettante and Jeff Hiller and Kirsten Wyatt as a pair of tertiary lovers come closer to capturing the proper wackiness of spirit. It's a fine reminder that, no matter how hard you try, show business evolves too quickly to make it possible ever perfectly capture an earlier, more primal incarnation of it. Even so, this one comes closer than any Encores! in recent memory has at doing exactly that. Whether or not it's a good thing depends on your tolerance for mindlessness and whether you can accept a tale about class (to the extent it's "about" anything) to be set in the earliest rumbles of the Roaring '20s without convincingly pretending it cares about the world outside the theater. We've been spoiled for decades by musicals that think, even if not always well. If you can stop doing that for a couple of hours, this full-throated throwback is a rhapsody of good indeed.
Lady, Be Good
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